New recursive methods for transversal covers

A transversal cover is a set of gk points in k disjoint groups of size g and a minimum collection of transversal subset s, called blocks, such that any pair of points not contained in the same group appear in at least one block. The case g = 2 was investigated and completely solved by Sperner, Renyi, Katona, Kleitman, and Spencer. For all g, asymptotic results are known, but little is understood for small values of k. Sloane and others have initiated the investigation of g = 3. The present article is concerned with constructive techniques for all g and k. One of the principal constructions generalizes Wilson's theorem for transversal designs. This article also discusses a simulated annealing algorithm for finding transversal covers and gives a table of the best known transversal covers at this time. © 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. J Combin Designs 7: 185–203, 1999